The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain

Gijon is a perky little city on the northern coast of Spain in the Principality of Asturias. It's a city with a lot of pride, history and a very strong sense of its own identity. Read my post 20 Years of Xixon Sound for a more detailed description of the city and its place in the history of Spanish rock.

For jazz fans in Gijon, Thursday night is jazz night in the Cafe Alambique. It's not famous. It has no great history and you can probably only fit around 40 or 50 people into it at any one time (though there is a terrace outside) but it is a great place to see bands. Especially jazz bands. You can enjoy a beer standing right next to the drummer or position yourself right opposite the sax player. So it’s very face to face and the acoustics are brilliant. I particularly love the sound of the acoustic double bass. It has a really sensual quality that comes over live but never seems to record well. In the Alambique it sounds really funky. However if you prefer you can just prop up the bar or sit at one of the tables (if there is room) and still only be feet away from the band.

For me this is the way to listen to jazz. It really is a live music. It exists in and for a moment. The musicians create, develop and explore ideas and need to listen and respond to each other in an instant. CDs and vinyl LPs may record the performances but the way to really experience jazz is to have it happening live right in front of you and to see and feel how the music is created from moment to moment. For me, that’s the thrill. To see it fly when it could quite easily fall apart and crash.

And the jazz flies at the Alambique on Thursday nights. There have been occasional excursions into blues, rock and soul but what has really surprised me over the last year or so has been the exceptional quality of the jazz on offer.

For example, this last Thursday I saw a stunning set by the Cesar Latorre trio which was so extraordinary it pretty much inspired me to write this post. The week before there was a really impressive set by the Adrian Carrio Quintet. Before that we had an excellent night with the Jacobo de Miguel trio. A month ago French guitarist Wilfried Wilde's trio played... I could go on, the quality of groups and performances is so consistently high.

So this post is an homage to the Alambique and some of the fine music I have seen there. If you live in Gijon, or are just passing through on a Thursday, go and check out what's on at the Alambique this week. Entrance is free and for the price of a beer or two you can see and listen to some pretty fine music. Their facebook page is regularly updated with what's on or coming up and is here http://www.facebook.com/cafealambique

None of the clips below were filmed in the Alambique. The bands were chosen quite randomly because they have all played there in the last month or so. All the musicians featured here are from Asturias. I think you'll agree there's a lot of good jazz here.

Jazz has found a home in Asturias.

Cesar Latorre is from Gijon but is now based in Amsterdam. He has released one CD called “Fastforward of a Day". His playing is inventive, occasionally slightly berserk and full of imagination. The two sets played last Thursday night showed breathtaking virtuosity and an entertaining playfulness which was, for me anyway, occasionally reminiscent of Thelonius Monk. Check out the video below and his website here http://www.cesarlatorre.com

Adrián Carrio is from Oviedo so is another local lad. He has toured the UK, Europe, Japan and the USA in the last six or seven years. I was quite impressed by the horn section at this gig and the band really swung. Lot of soul.
Check the clip below and his page here http://adriancarrio.es/

The line-up on the clip below is Javier Rubio: alto sax
, Eladio Díaz: tenor sax, 
Adrian Carrio: Piano, 
David Casillas: double bass and 
Felix Morales: drums.

Jacobo de Miguel is another Asturian musician. I've seen him a couple of times at the Alambique now. Another excellent keyboard player with a strong melodic sense.

The 15 minute clip below, although not recorded at the Alambique, gives you an idea of the variety, skill and quality of music on offer most Thursday nights.

More
Asturias > Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn

20 years of Xixon Sound

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968

What is Bebop? - The Subject is Jazz

Jonathan Wilson - Retro-Futurism at the Centro Niemeyer, Aviles, Spain

Jonathan Wilson concert at the Centro Niemeyer, Aviles, Spain - 8th July 2013

So. I’m writing this not from The Valley of the Silver Moon (probably one of Jonathan Wilson’s best-known and most accomplished songs) but from a park in a city called Gijon in northern Spain. It’s a very hot muggy evening and it feels like there might be some thunder in the air. Perfect weather for listening to Jonathan Wilson’s album “Gentle Spirit” then.

There is a sultry, soporific feel to many of the songs on the album which suits the heat induced lethargy I currently feel. Although, to be honest, despite the high quality of song-writing and production it is an album I have found at times to be a little overlong. I can’t always seem to maintain the required mood for the entire 80 minutes. That is almost certainly my fault but I’m not sure it doesn’t also suffer from what we used to call double album syndrome, ie cut out half the songs and have a really classic single album instead. “Gentle Spirit” would be an absolute classic with 6 or 7 songs.

The Jonathan Wilson band seen live, however, is another story. I had the supreme pleasure of seeing this excellent band on Monday night in a city near here called Aviles. They were playing in a room downstairs at the Niemeyer Center and amazingly, there were only about 150 people present (no advertising? If not then shame on you Aviles) so it was a pretty intimate relaxed kind of gig. The room itself is all white and shoebox shaped with the stage set up down a long side. It has an art gallery feel to it but with the paintings removed. In fact the whole Niemeyer center in Aviles looks like a film set from a 1970s science fiction movie set in the 21st Century.

Maybe an apt setting for Jonathan Wilson’s own kind of musical retro-futurism.

Centro Niemeyer, Aviles - From Jonathan Wilson's facebook page

Anyway, not the standard kind of set-up then. This was the first time I’d seen the band and I thought I knew what to expect as there is some very good footage around of the band playing live on the net. The Live on KEXP gig is particularly impressive here. I was definitely ready and up for it. By the end of the show my expectations had not only been met but greatly surpassed.

For me, it is in a live setting that the songs on the album really come into their own. Live they have an organic quality that the album occasionally seems to lack, but it is the band. Believe me, the band are seriously good. Like early 70s Traffic, the songs build into a slow groove with some particularly fine extended instrumental passages. The tight interplay between the rhythm section of Dan on bass and Richie on drums (apologies, I didn’t catch their surnames and have been unable to find the line-up listed online) allow the soloists, Wilson, Omar on second guitar and Jason(?) on keyboards, to stretch out into some particularly high-quality musical interaction. Wilson is a very nifty economical guitar player with a soulful lonesome tone (occasionally reminiscent of David Gilmour) and has more than able support. Highlights were numerous but The Valley of the Silver Moon was stunning and live goes places it doesn’t even hint at on the album (see below).

Madonna's La Isla Bonita (see below) was a surprise but new song “Angel” has a particularly fat groove which is reminiscent of the middle rock section in the Pink Floyd’s Echoes but with a hint of Little Feat’s rampant syncopation. Everybody is dancing. This isn’t sit-on-the-floor stoner trippiness anymore this is classic relaxed ultrafunk. This bodes very well indeed for the new album to be released in the autumn.

The guys came out front stage for a quick chat after the gig and I had the pleasure of briefly chatting to Dan, Richie and Jonathan. This is a great band. Go and see them. Even if you don’t like the album much, you will be amazed by how good this band is live. Classic rock rebooted, refunked and retuned.




Desert Raven

La Isla Bonita

Encores

JW at the Niemeyer

If you like this try 

The Tarnished Gold of Beachwood Sparks

Parallax - Pink Floyd and the BBC